It’s been an up-and-down first season for New Orleans Hornets coach Monty Williams, who is taking his team into what might be the most challenging stretch that any team will face in the coming month. New Orleans holds the West’s No. 7 seed at 39-30, and while they’re only two games behind Denver for the No. 5 seed, they’re only four games ahead of No. 10 Phoenix—Wednesday night’s foe. New Orleans will play 12 of its remaining 13 regular-season games against teams at or above .500, and the 13th team is Indiana, which is fighting for its playoff life.

New Orleans has proven to be one of the tougher head-coaching situations in the league—daunting enough that Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau passed on the job this summer. The Hornets were 37-45 last year, overhauled the roster in the offseason and during the year (only four members of last year’s team are still on the roster), and were put into league stewardship when owner George Shinn’s attempt to sell the team fell through.

But Williams has the Hornets in the playoff mix, and in doing so, has proven his coaching chops after five years as an assistant. And in the long slog that lies ahead for his team, Williams will see a familiar face that started it all for him—coach Doc Rivers, whose Celtics will be in New Orleans on Saturday.

“He was the first person to tell me I was going to be a coach,” Williams said of Rivers. “He told me a lot of things when I was a player with him and for him. He’s always willing to take time to pour stuff into me that most guys in this league didn’t. He’s the first guy really to pull me by the collar and adamantly tell me to work on my game, because I wasn’t doing the right things, the things that were going to help me have a long career.”

Williams first met Rivers in 1994, when he was a hotshot first-rounder with the Knicks out of Notre Dame, and Rivers was a 12-year veteran. Williams was very athletic, and in warm-ups, teammates would nudge him into doing showy dunks. That irritated Rivers. “He pulled me to the side one day and he just ripped me,” Williams said. “He was a player. He was like, ‘Stop dunking. Work on your game. You’re going to be out of this league in two or three years if you don’t work on your game.’ And he just walked away from me, no explanation. ... I was mad and embarrassed, but I understood that he was trying to look out for my career.”

Three years after Rivers’ playing career was over, he was coaching the Magic, and Williams signed on to play for him. In Williams’ second year in Orlando, Rivers told him he would wind up being a coach.

“I thought he was crazy,” Williams said. “He just said, ‘Monty, you’re going to be a head coach someday.’ And I was like, ‘Where did that come from?’ Because he was on me all the time. Yelling at me, screaming at me, to the point where I was like, ‘Man, you know, I played with you and now I am playing for you and you just are on me all the time.’ I never understood it, and when you’re a young player, you never understand that kind of stuff. I just thought he was crazy.”

In hindsight, it all makes sense to Williams—Rivers was tough on him, but it doesn’t seem so crazy now. As he is pushing his team down a very difficult last few weeks, he is showing his players the same kind of tough love Rivers showed him.

“He’s been willing to risk our relationship to tell me the truth,” Williams said. “I find myself doing that now, our guys are starting to understand how much I care about them because I will tell them the truth, and I get a lot of that from Doc. To say he’s been a big brother would be understating it—he’s been more than that.”